I was just passing through Alabama and had only an afternoon to capture Ricky’s senior pictures. Despite various elements working against us, we put our best foot forward and got to work.

Having had no experience doing a shoot of a male yet, I’d researched various poses to make sure I could keep Ricky looking his best. I even had some pictures saved to my phone as inspiration in case I needed to show him how to pose. Miraculously, we never ended up needing them.

Another challenge we had was that the afternoon sun in the valley where we had wanted to shoot was way too harsh, and the photos looked so washed out. Although these are not the greatest shots from the day, I did what I could to salvage them in Lightroom because I wanted to make sure Ricky had a few pictures with his little girl.

Next, we decided to seek out a different location–one that wasn’t in the middle of a huge sunny field. At a park down the road, we found a few spots that had potential.

Although it was a slightly cool January day, the colors in the surrounding forest were warm.

We took a few pictures by this bridge before making our way to the tiny little playground.

Ricky wanted some pictures with his car, so once again, we returned to the washed-out field to see what we could get.

We thought that we could try shooting in the field again during golden hour later in the day, but we got totally sidetracked at our next photo location. And that is a story for another time!